


What to Fix (What is Broken)

by Goodluckdetective (scorpiontales)



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, F/F, Rite of Tranquility
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-14
Updated: 2015-10-14
Packaged: 2018-04-26 10:14:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5000845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiontales/pseuds/Goodluckdetective
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hawke is made tranquil. Merrill fights against the impossible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What to Fix (What is Broken)

Hawke often found that her life was measured in two categories; what she used to be and what she used to have. 

The latter was a longer list than the former. She had lost so much, enough that she could drown in it, all that empty space. Her father to illness, her sister to war. Her brother to the Wardens, her mother to magic. Her friends to the ruins that was Kirkwall, the flames separating them from what they used to be. And that was only counting the people. The things she had lost (her right kidney, her smile, her faith) was even longer. 

The list of what she used to be was more complicated. Less defined. Was she still a daughter when she had no parents? Was she a champion when she had no city? Was she a mage when she had no magic? 

The last one, she supposed, would have likely caused her pain, if things were as they were before. Before the rogue templars and the fire and the brand on her forehead as Merrill screamed and screamed. Those memories were blurry to her now, lost behind the haze of smoke in her own mind. It was likely for the best; Tranquils should not ruminate on things they could not change.

That was what she was now. A Tranquil. Not a champion. Not a lover. Not a friend. 

It didn’t hurt her, to be Tranquil. Nothing hurt her anymore except the physical things, like Merrill combing out tangles in her hair, or the slice of a knife when her hand slipped cutting carrots. They were nothing like the pains she could remember a lifetime ago, snapshots from another life, another her. A woman who begged Merrill to walk away from a mirror, who yelled at Anders as the chantery burned, who weaped over the corpse of what was left of her mother. 

She was not that woman anymore. She never would be. Not that Merrill believed. Not that she ever would.

“I’ve received word from Isabella,” Merrill said. She was combing out Hawke’s hair again, being careful to avoid the knots. Hawke had offered to cut it short, less maintenance, but Merrill had asked her not to. Something about what she would have wanted.  She had said the same thing when Hawke mentioned that she could comb her own hair. “She’s making progress on our last lead. We might have found something this time.”

“That is unlikely,” Hawke said. Pure truth, nothing but. Logic. Merrill sighed, a tired sound that Hawke was hearing more often these days. It had become more common than her laughs, the same laughs another Hawke had smiled at and adored. 

“Unlikely doesn’t mean impossible,” Merrill said, some of the cheer she used to always carry, present. She was braiding Hawke’s hair now, the way Hawke used to wear it. It was practical. 

Hawke had nothing to say to that. Contradicting Merrill’s arguments never went anywhere. It was a waste of energy. No point in trying to move the unmovable. Why Hawke bothered before was a mystery.

Merrill fixed the braid and pulled it back into a pun, putting in the pins to keep it up. She turned hawke around and smiled, pressing a light kiss to her forehead. It was warm and pleasant.

Merrill used to kiss her on the lips. After the Templars, she had never done so again.  

Merrill put her hand over Hawke’s cheek. Her thumb brushed against her skin. Hawke noticed as her eyes grew determined. “I will fix this.”

“There is nothing to fix,” Hawke replied, as she had always done for the last two months. Merrill looked at her, something in the big round eyes breaking, and she leaned forward to press one more kiss to Hawke’s forehead. 

“That is why I must fix it.”

When Merrill left, five seconds later, Hawke still had yet to comprehend what Merrill meant by that. 


End file.
